Elena goes into labor on her due date.

Of course she does. This is what she was born for.

Her water breaks while she's in bed, and she wakes up to a soaked sheet underneath her. She's worried for a moment that she's peed herself, but it doesn't take long for her to realize what's going on, and then she's not worried anymore. She's terrified.

She leans over and shakes Klaus, hard. Her lungs are burning; she's hyperventilating. She's not ready for this.

"What is it?" Klaus groans, propping himself up on his forearm.

"I think I'm going – I think –" She can't get the words out, but Klaus is alert in an instant, and leans over to turn on the lamp. She's sure she's a sight, clutching her stomach, seconds from tears.

"Elena," he says, and then he slides an arm around her waist. "Elena, breathe, you're okay," he tells her. "Elena, just breathe."

He rubs soothing circles on her back, and she leans her head against his bare chest and tries to match her breaths to his, slow and steady, until she feels like she can think straight again.

"Oof," she says, and grips his arm. The wave of pain passes, and she takes a few deep breaths. "Oh." She clenches her jaw.

"I take it you think you're going into labor, sweetheart?" Klaus asks. "These could be false contractions. I've read that those are common."

"Yeah, I don't think your water breaks when you have Braxton-Hicks," Elena replies. "I think she's – oh my god, I'm going to have a daughter."

Klaus laughs. "That's hardly news, love."

"No, I mean, now, today, oh my god," she says. She doesn't know how to put it into words, or if she even wants to put it into words for Klaus, really: that she's about to become a mother; that after today she will never not be a mother again.

"I supposed we'd better get you to the hospital, then," Klaus says.

"The hospital?" Elena asks.

Klaus laughs. "Don't worry, sweetheart. I've arranged for a private maternity wing, of course."

"Oh, of course," Elena says. "Naturally." She hisses in pain at another contraction, and Klaus climbs out of bed and makes his way over to his dresser. "Yes, take your time changing, it's not like I'm having a baby here or anything," she bites out. He laughs, finishes getting dressed, and opens the door to the bathroom to grab her favorite robe from where it's hanging on the door. She shifts and puts her feet on the ground, wincing a little, and shrugs on the robe, and then just as she's about to stand Klaus sweeps an arm under her legs and picks her up.

"Klaus!" She smacks his chest, lightly. "I can walk, you know."

"I don't doubt that you can, love, but why should you?" he asks.

She gives up, and he carries her to the car. The drive to the hospital is way too fast to be legal, and she doesn't have to wait at all before she's ushered into the private wing and Klaus is lying her down on a hospital bed that's much more comfortable than any hospital bed she's ever lain on before. She doesn't think twice before accepting an epidural.

The delivery suite is ridiculous; on top of the room she's in, which is enormous, there's a huge bathroom and a massive sitting room, and it turns out Klaus is having her delivery catered, so there's a tiered tray of pastries next to her if she decides she wants to nibble on anything. It's completely ridiculous. There's an enormous TV, though, which is nice; Elena forces Klaus to sit through a good five episodes of Gilmore Girls.

"I think our Miranda is going to grow up to resemble Rory quite a bit," he says when they take a break to eat. "Though perhaps less trusting; I won't stand for her to associate with boys at all like that one Rory's with. If anyone dared to disrespect my daughter like that, I'd string–"

"Klaus!" she says, but laughs all the same. "When she's old enough to date, you can talk about how you'll react to the boys she brings home – or girls, or both –"

"You think she might be prefer the company of women?" Klaus asks, straightening up in his seat, with a smile. "Now, that sounds far more–"

"She hasn't even taken a breath yet!" Elena shakes her head. "She's not interested in anyone, she's not even born."

"I'm thinking ahead, sweetheart," Klaus says.

"Over a decade ahead?" Elena asks. "Don't you think that's a bit much?"

"Your mom definitely did," comes Jenna's voice from the doorway. "Your dad, not so much."

"Jenna!" Elena grins, wider than she has in ages. Jenna walks over to her and hugs her, Jeremy and John behind her. "What are you doing here?"

"I took the liberty of having your family flown in," Klaus says. "Mine should be joining us shortly."

"Wait, your family is coming?" Elena asks.

Klaus smirks. "There was a time when the birth of an heir was an extravagant event," he tells her.

Elena considers retorting, but settles on just shaking her head.

Within the hour, the sitting room has turned into something of a cocktail reception; Klaus has bottles of expensive champagne in circulation, and while Kol doesn't make an appearance, both Elijah and Rebekah (who is very put out that no one came to her room to wake her when they left for the hospital) show up. Elijah doesn't come anywhere near Elena's room – he exchanges a few words with Klaus, tells him that he'll be in the city for the next couple of days, and then takes off. Rebekah doesn't leave Elena's room except to refill her glass or to grab another beignet. There's a TV in the sitting room, so John and Jeremy find some sort of sports game playing and stay there for the most part. Jenna doesn't leave her side.

When the time comes for her to push, everyone but Jenna and Klaus is shepherded out of the room. Klaus sits in the armchair as far from the bed as possible. Jenna is half-seated next to Elena, wrapping an arm around her, stroking her hair and forehead, telling her exactly how badly Elena's mother had cussed her father out when Jeremy had been born while Elena hiccups out laughs.

It's exhausting, and it hurts; but she's been a lot more tired and been through a lot more pain. She's had a lot worse.

Miranda Grace Gilbert is born as healthy as a baby can be, with clear blue eyes and not a single hair on her head.

She's the most beautiful thing Elena's ever seen.

Everyone else agrees on that point. Jenna coos at her, and Rebekah holds her like she's scared she'll break her; Jeremy sits on the bed and rocks her while Elena leans against his shoulder, and when she asks John if he wants to pick her up he looks as though he expects to wake up from a dream any moment. Rebekah calls Elijah and so Elijah comes by. He doesn't ask to hold Miranda, and Elena doesn't offer; he strokes one finger down the side of Miranda's cheek with more care than she thinks he'd touch an ancient painting with. He only stays a few minutes before excusing himself. He thanks her, before he leaves; it's the most sincere she's ever heard him sound.

Klaus stays on the other side of the room through all of this; he doesn't take his eyes off the baby for a moment.

At long last, it's just the two of them – the three of them. Elena looks at Miranda, and knows she'll never be tired of looking. This is her daughter, her daughter, her daughter, the child she was never supposed to have, the girl who was never supposed to be born, except that her being born is the only good thing Elena's sure of anymore, the only good thing in this whole world, the only reason anything else has ever happened.

Katherine never got to hold her baby; Tatia was killed before she could see her child grow up. Elena looks at her daughter and thinks I will not die; never before has she wanted to live this much.

She glances up at Klaus, who's still standing against the wall on the other side of the room. "Do you want to hold her?" she asks.

Klaus frowns.

"Come over here," she says, and Klaus does, moving as though he isn't quite sure of his center of gravity any longer. "You haven't even met your daughter yet."

Klaus sits on the bed, and Elena places Miranda in his arms; there's a look on his face she's never seen before, and after a moment she realizes it's awe. She thinks back to that bright, sunny day when he'd pledged to be a better father to their daughter than Mikael was to him. She'd known he meant it; now, she actually believes it.

. . .

They go back to the house the next day, and she extends an invitation for her family to stay for a few days on the condition that they go out and explore San Francisco while they have the chance. When she gets home, she makes her way up to the nursery, nestles into the rocking chair with Miranda in her arms, and sits for hours and hours, holding her, feeding her, watching her sleep. Her daughter falls asleep in her arms like she knows she'll never have a safer place to land. Elena knows that she's a baby and this is what babies do, she knows this, but she lets herself believe that somewhere deep down Miranda already knows Elena will never let her fall. She sleeps like it, like she already knows, and Elena can't help but marvel this creature that trusts her more than Elena herself remembers ever trusting anyone.

Her daughter, her daughter, her daughter.

Elena hasn't thought of lullabies in forever. She didn't know she still remembered any, but she manages to find one in the depths of her memory, and she sings it, her voice only a little rusty. She didn't know she had anything that innocent left inside of her.

Maybe the girl inside her isn't quite dead, after all.

Klaus comes in that afternoon. "You ought to get some rest," he tells her, his voice quiet enough not to wake Miranda.

Elena ignores him, eyes fixed on the sleeping form in her arms. After a long moment, she looks up at him. "Do you think she'll be happy?" she asks.

Klaus blinks. "Happy?" he asks.

I want her to have the life neither of us got to live, Elena wants to say. I want her to never go a moment in her life not knowing she's desperately loved. I want her to never see so much of the world that she thinks she's ready to leave it. "I want her to be happy," she settles on saying, instead.

"So do I," Klaus says. He meets her eyes.

They've never looked at each other like this before, without hidden intent, without a shred of performance. She exhales, and she can feel something unwinding in her chest; when she inhales, she breathes so deeply she thinks she might cry.

"She has your eyes," Elena says at last.

Klaus smiles. "All infants are born with blue eyes," he tells her.

She shakes her head. "They're your eyes, Klaus," she tells him. "They aren't going to change."

"You sound very certain of that," he tells her.

"I am," she says, and looks back down at her daughter. "And I was right, by the way. She does have my nose."

It takes Klaus a moment, and then he bursts into laughter, delighted and surprised; she laughs too, after a moment.

She's a mother, and she's holding her child; she's sitting in her daughter's nursery with her father in the doorway. It's a moment she never expected to have.

She wishes she could live in it forever.

. . .

Jenna and Jeremy and John all arrive that night, and Jeremy comes straight up to the nursery before she's had the chance to go down and greet them – no, that's a lie, she heard them arriving, she could have gone down; she chose not to, to stay exactly where she is, sitting with her daughter in her arms.

"Can I hold her again?" he asks.

Of course he can: he's Jeremy. He holds Miranda like he was born for it, and Elena looks at him and thinks please, please fall in love and get married and have children, please have a happy marriage and 2.5 kids and a white picket fence. Please, let Jeremy have that.

"Miranda Grace," he says, after a long moment. "I think mom and dad would like that."

"That I had a baby with the biggest, baddest vampire of all time?" Elena asks, voice wry.

"That you love them this much, after everything," Jeremy replies, instead.

Had he said her parents would understand, she'd have laughed; she doesn't believe that, she'd given up on trying to believe that ages ago. She isn't the daughter they wanted her to be – but she loves them, and it's the best she can give them.

She looks at her daughter, and she can't breathe – it's like there's a brick in her chest, and she has to look away, eyes misting over, before she can inhale again.

The next day Alaric arrives, of all people. He shows up at the house out of the blue, and Elena's thrilled, of course she's thrilled – she runs and hugs him, and he smells the same way he smelled when he came to pick her up after the sacrifice, like safety.

"What are you doing here?" she asks, beaming, after she pulls away.

Alaric doesn't answer – he looks over his shoulder to where Jenna is standing, and Elena looks back at Jenna, too. Jenna is grinning. "Yes," she says.

Elena narrows her eyes. "Wait, what's going on?" she asks.

Alaric opens his mouth as though to speak but then hesitates, and Jenna laughs and walks over to Elena, taking her hand.

"The night you went into labor," Jenna says, "Alaric and I were out together. We had dinner, and then we went for a drive, and drove and drove all the way to DC. We walked along the monuments, in the middle of the night, and then we were at the FDR monument and the fountains were all lit and running, and… Ric proposed."

"Oh my god," Elena says, face splitting into a smile so big it hurts. "Oh my god! Jenna!"

"And then she got the call," Alaric chimes in, laughing.

Elena blinks. "Wait, what?"

"One of Klaus's henchmen called me," Jenna says with a laugh, "and there's a special ringtone installed for that, so of course I had to answer it–"

"–Klaus installed a special ringtone on your phone?" Elena asks. She's going to be annoyed about this later, but right now she can't find it in herself to be.

"–and as soon as she heard you'd gone into labor, she told me that she would say yes, but for now, we were putting a pin in it," Alaric finishes.

"What?" Elena asks, looking between them.

Jenna's smile makes Elena want to cry. "It was the day your daughter was going to be born," she says. "I wasn't going to steal your thunder by getting engaged the same day."

Elena laughs, touched and delighted and too overwhelmed about everything in her life by half, and Jenna wraps an arm around her and presses a kiss to her temple.

"So when you just said yes–" Elena asks.

Jenna grins, and looks over at Alaric, who reaches into his pocket and pulls out a small black box. He opens it to reveal a beautiful ring – two gold bands with a princess cut diamond, so stunning and so perfectly Jenna – and Elena takes a step back, almost in tears (stupid post-natal hormones) and watches as he slides it onto Jenna's finger.

Later, Elena knows, she'll be feeling almost sad, thinking back on this – she'll never have this, not this earnest love, not this romance without any layers of performance between them – but she doesn't feel that now, not in the least. She's just happy, now – happier than it's probably safe to be, and so full of love she thinks she'll burst with it.

Alaric stays with them for a few more days – after a week, though, all four of their visitors head back to Mystic Falls, and as much as Elena loves them and will miss them she's also more relieved than she'd ever admit. She has a daughter, and above and beyond everyone else she cares about, she wants to be alone with her daughter, and the only person she really wants with her is the only other person as in awe of Miranda's existence as she is.

. . .

The doctor told them that, to be safe, they should wait up to six weeks before having sex – Elena interpreted this as a flexible guideline, but Klaus, of course, took it as seriously as possible. He wants her to have more children, she knows, and he won't take any risks in that department, but after a while it becomes tedious, waiting that long; she wants him, and she knows he wants her, and knowing this but not being able to act on it actually aches.

Which is why, the morning of the day she's been cleared for sex, she crawls out of bed early, as quiet as she can, and tiptoes to the bathroom, draws herself a bath, strips naked, climbs in, and waits for him.

It's less than an hour before she hears him say "Elena?", voice bemused, to which she replies "in here." He walks in, shirtless, because he always sleeps shirtless, sees her, and raises an eyebrow.

"Care to join me?" she asks, grinning.

He laughs. "Quite the production you've put together here, love," he says.

She raises an eyebrow. "Don't tell me you've forgotten what day it is," she says.

He laughs again. "Never," he says, and then pulls off his bottoms and climbs into the bath, She laughs, wrapping her legs around his torso as he leans in for a hungry kiss, and then shifts, leaning forward so he's sitting and she's on top of him, straddling him. Her hair is up in a bun, and he reaches up and pulls out the elastic so it tumbles all around her face and shoulders and down her back, its tips submerged in water, and then he grabs her waist and pulls her closer to him.

They're both desperate and desperately trying not to rush this; her hips are rolling over his, she's pulling his hair so hard he'd be in pain if he were human – he moves forward and she's beneath him, her face submerged just for a moment, and then she rises up to kiss him right above the surface of the water, desperate, mouth open against his, craving something she can never put into words, wanting, needing, and taking.

After they've both finished, her legs are still wrapped around him, and a few minutes later she feels wind whipping around her face and then they're on the balcony, cool air all around them, but she's burning nevertheless, every inch of her body she can manage intertwined with him, his hands between her ass and the balcony railing so even though she's technically sitting she doesn't feel it at all. Anyone could see them – there's no one for miles, she knows this, he knows this, but the world is so wide around them, it seems to go on forever, and there's nothing in all of it except for the two of them.

After a few minutes, he pulls back. "Do you trust me?" he asks, grinning.

She laughs. "Do I have a choice?" she replies.

He jumps over the railing, holding her tight, and they land gently as can be in the sand, right where the rolling waves of the sea are breaking against land. He lays her down, and there's sand everywhere, but somehow she doesn't mind; the water rolls over them like a blessing, like a baptism, like a rebirth of sorts.

She shouldn't feel right, where she is, but she does; underneath her killer and her lover, right where the earth meets the sea, at the intersection of everything that doesn't make sense but that always will. She's underwater one moment and breathing like she's just learning how to the next, and his weight on top of her is soothing and certain and sure, anchoring her between dry land and the deep, exactly where she's meant to be.

THREE YEARS LATER

Elena knows she's asleep. She's pretty sure you aren't supposed to know, when you're asleep – that should mean she's awake, except she's not awake, she's just as sure of this. Everything is black, but it's not because her eyes are closed; something is pulling at her, hard, and she reaches back as best as she can. It's like throwing a hand out to someone thrashing in the middle of strong currents – she could end up pulled in, instead, but she isn't.

Instead, she sees her own face looking back at her.

"Elena," says – Tatia, definitely Tatia, she doesn't even have to wait for the rest of Tatia to come into focus to tell it's her because she knows, she knows like she knows her own name – maybe better. "Elena, thank the gods. I wasn't sure I'd be able to reach you – we haven't much time."

Elena can't reply. She knows this without even trying to say a word, and so she does not try.

"She's waking up, Elena," Tatia says; there's a fear in her eyes that Elena's never seen. "She's – do you remember what I told you, the last time? It's your daughter, Elena. I shouldn't be able to speak to you, to reach across worlds like this, but it's your daughter, our daughter, and so just this once the laws of the worlds would bend for us.

A strange tune starts to play – a sort of humming, almost – in the very back of Elena's mind; Tatia's eyes grow wider. "You must prepare, Elena," she says, her voice quiet, words rushed. "You know as well as I do that this is not a simple dream. I cannot–" She closes her eyes. "Remember this, Elena," she says, after a moment. "Remember this. All of us depend on it."

Everything is black once more, but the tune doesn't fade – if anything it's clearer, less like humming, so precise and sharp it sounds almost like a music box. Images come, then, but nothing certain, everything shaking like it's being put under strobe lights, like it's being played through an old projector that's about to self-destruct. She sees Miranda lying in her bed, curled up under the pink covers they'd bought for her just a few weeks ago, holding her stuffed wolf against her chest like a lifeline; she hears the tune, louder and louder, sees Miranda toss and turn in her sleep; she sees plants, vines, rising up to the window, twining their way around Miranda's bedposts until they've wrapped their way all around her bed.

Elena wakes with a start, gasping so deeply the rush of air scraping against the back of her throat hurts; her heart is pounding so fast and so hard she feels sick to her stomach. She can't calm her breathing as hard as she tries – she's gasping, so violently it almost sounds like she's sobbing.

She can feel Klaus's form rousing next to her. "Elena, sweetheart?" he asks, voice drowsy. "Is something the matter?"

She can't slow her breathing, so she forces herself to hold her breath; the baby's only just started sleeping through the night, and if she doesn't stop she might wake him. "I'm fine," she says, her voice little more than a wheeze. "I'm fine, I just, I had a bad dream."

"What sort of dream?" Klaus asks.

She looks into his eyes and knows that she cannot tell him; she hasn't told him about Tatia, not in all these years. He can't know. He won't know.

"Miranda was in danger," Elena says, instead. "Someone was coming for her – someone magic, a witch, I think–"

Klaus sighs, and presses a kiss against her hair. "The children are perfectly fine, love," he says. "I promise. You haven't anything to worry about."

Remember this, Elena, Tatia had said.

Elena will remember. She promises this to Tatia in her mind, and hopes Tatia can hear: I remember.

"Yeah, you're right," she says, and swallows. "Just… a really bad nightmare, you know."

"Just breathe, sweetheart," Klaus says, and Elena curls into him and tries to match the rise and fall of her chest to his.

It takes a while, but finally, she falls back to sleep.

THE END

. . .

A/N: There will be a sequel. Thank you all so much for reading.